kids encyclopedia robot

Mary Somerville facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
Quick facts for kids
Mary Somerville
Thomas Phillips - Mary Fairfax, Mrs William Somerville, 1780 - 1872. Writer on science - Google Art Project.jpg
Mary Somerville
Born
Mary Fairfax

(1780-12-26)26 December 1780
Died 29 November 1872(1872-11-29) (aged 91)
Resting place English Cemetery, Naples, Italy
Nationality Scottish
Citizenship British
Awards Patron's Medal (1869)
Scientific career
Fields Science writing
Mathematics

Mary Somerville was a Scottish science writer and a polymath. She was also famous for supporting more education for women and supporting more civil rights for women.

Early life

Somerville was born on December 26, 1780, in Jedburgh, Scotland. She was the fifth of seven children. She was one of three who lived to be adults. Her father, William George Fairfax, was a vice-admiral in the Royal Navy. He would go on long trips away. Somerville's mother didn't try to educate her daughters; she thought that all girls needed to know was how to cook and clean. When Somerville wasn't doing household chores, she would often go to the seaside and the moors.

When Somerville's father came home, he discovered that his ten-year-old daughter couldn't read or write. He sent her to a boarding school. By her teenage years, Somerville had become interested in algebra. Her parents got angry. They told her not to study it - they worried that studying mathematical concepts would cause her physical and mental harm."Mary Somerville." Scientists: Their Lives and Works, UXL, 2006. Student Resources in Context. Accessed 31 Mar. 2017.

Marriage and adult life

In 1804, when she was 24, Somerville got married to Samuel Grieg. She found that marriage gave her independence from her parents. She began studying algebra. She had two sons, but her husband died in 1807. As a widow, she found more freedom to study and learned many more mathematical concepts."Mary Somerville." Scientists: Their Lives and Works, UXL, 2006. Student Resources in Context. Accessed 31 Mar. 2017.

In 1812, she married again. Her second husband was William Somerville. They had four children together. Somerville began experiments on solar radiation with her newfound support from William.

Work

She studied the sun's radiation effects on Earth's substances. In 1826, she published her first paper, "On The Magnetizing Power of the More Refrangible Solar Rays." She later published two more papers and two books. She later moved to Italy and started her third book. In 1848, she had a publication called Physical Geography.

Honors and awards

Somerville wrote many books. Somerville's second book lead to the discovery of Neptune. She then became the one of the first two women to be named Honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society. Somerville had a picture hung in the Royal Society's great hall. She won the Victoria Gold Medal from the Royal Geographic Society in 1870.

Late life

In 1860, her only surviving son died. Her husband died 5 years later. Somerville became sad. Her daughter told her to work on more writing projects. She did, but she wasn't in touch with modern science. She began to promote civil rights and higher women's education. She died at age 92 in Naples, Italy, on November 19, 1872. Oxford University named one of its colleges after her.

Legacy

Somerville crater AS15-M-2250
Somerville Crater on the Moon

In the year following Somerville's death, her autobiographical Personal Recollections was published, consisting of reminiscences written during her old age. Over 10,000 pieces are in the Somerville Collection of the Bodleian Library and Somerville College, Oxford. The collection includes papers relating to her writing and published work, and correspondence with family members, numerous scientists and writers, and other figures in public life. Also included is substantial correspondence with the Byron and Lovelace families.

Somerville Square in Burntisland is named after her family and marks the site of their home.

Somerville College, Oxford, was named after Somerville, as is Somerville House, Burntisland, where she lived for a time and Somerville House, a high school for girls in Brisbane, Australia. One of the Committee Rooms of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh has been named after her.

Somerville Island, a small island in Barrow Strait, Nunavut, was named after her by Sir William Edward Parry in 1819.

The Somerville Club was founded in 1878 in London, by 1887 it was re-established as the New Somerville Club and had disappeared by 1908.

The vessel Mary Somerville was launched in 1835 at Liverpool. She traded with India for Taylor, Potter & Co., of Liverpool, and disappeared with the loss of all aboard in late 1852 or early 1853.

Mary Somerville featured in miniature in The English Bijou Almanack, 1837, with poetry by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

5771 Somerville (1987 ST1) is a main-belt asteroid discovered on 21 September 1987 by E. Bowell at Lowell Observatory Flagstaff, Arizona, and named after her. Somerville crater is a small lunar crater in the eastern part of the Moon. It lies to the east of the prominent crater Langrenus. It is one of a handful of lunar craters named after women.

In February 2016 she was shortlisted, along with Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell and civil engineer Thomas Telford, in a public competition run by Royal Bank of Scotland to decide whose face should appear on the bank's new £10 notes, to be issued in 2017. Later that month RBS announced that she had won the public vote, held on Facebook. The banknotes, bearing her image, were issued in the second half of 2017.

On February 2, 2020, Google celebrated her with a Google Doodle.

Works

  • 1826 On the magnetizing power of the more refrangible solar rays
  • 1831 Mechanism of the Heavens
  • 1832 A Preliminary Dissertation on the Mechanisms of the Heavens
  • 1834 On the Connection of the Physical Sciences
  • 1848 Physical Geography
  • 1869 Molecular and Microscopic Science
  • 1874 Personal recollections, from early life to old age, of Mary Somerville

Images for kids

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Mary Somerville para niños

kids search engine
Mary Somerville Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.